Gov. Nathan Deal wants more minorities to vote Republican because he suddenly realized all those black and Hispanic kids in our public schools will be the majority of the Georgia electorate in one more generation.

So to attract these young African-Americans and Hispanics and their parents to the GOP’s big tent, Deal signed an order last week restricting the Common Core curriculum, not because it’s bad for education, but because its adoption was encouraged by the Obama administration.

It’s the same far right pandering Deal engaged in when he refused Medicaid expansion dollars. That decision cost the state jobs and revenue while ensuring your federal tax dollars pay for expanded Medicaid in blue states like New York without a nickel coming back to Georgia.

Sen. Chuck Schumer thanks you.

On the one hand, the GOP knows it will continue to lose elections without African-Americans, Hispanics and Latinos, Asians and other minority constituencies, not to mention women.

On the other hand, as noted by MDJ’s Don McKee, “One hurdle for Deal and other Georgia GOP leaders is the disaffected tea party and other conservatives like those who appeared at the state convention Friday to denounce ‘Republicans in name only.’”

See the problem for the party of stupid, as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal famously dubbed today’s GOP? They want it both ways.

We’ll let the radicals, the nativists, the religious right, the tin foil hat wearers, and the angry white men run the party - the same crowd that effectively destroyed the GOP’s 2012 presidential chances - but we’d sure like them black folks, Mexicans and ladies to vote for us!

Those RINOs the tea partiers detest are the same moderate Republicans who used to help conservatives win elections; you know, guys like Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.

But with the far right wingers making noise disproportionate to their actual numbers – only 8 percent of conservatives self-identify as tea party according to Rasmussen – and Republican elected officials terrified of being “primaried” out of a job, the GOP leadership believes, falsely, that their party must accommodate extremism.

Those elusive minority votes won’t come until Republicans purge their ranks of the radical elements that are costing them elections.

Gov. Nathan Deal wants more minorities to vote Republican because he suddenly realized all those black and Hispanic kids in our public schools will be the majority of the Georgia electorate in one more generation.

So to attract these young African-Americans and Hispanics and their parents to the GOP’s big tent, Deal signed an order last week restricting the Common Core curriculum, not because it’s bad for education, but because its adoption was encouraged by the Obama administration.

It’s the same far right pandering Deal engaged in when he refused Medicaid expansion dollars. That decision cost the state jobs and revenue while ensuring your federal tax dollars pay for expanded Medicaid in blue states New York without a nickel coming back to Georgia.

Sen. Chuck Schumer thanks you.

On the one hand, the GOP knows it will continue to lose elections without African-Americans, Hispanics and Latinos, Asians and other minority constituencies, not to mention women.

On the other hand, as noted by MDJ’s Don McKee, “One hurdle for Deal and other Georgia GOP leaders is the disaffected tea party and other conservatives like those who appeared at the state convention Friday to denounce ‘Republicans in name only.’”

See the problem for the party of stupid, as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal famously dubbed today’s GOP? They want it both ways.

We’ll let the radicals, the nativists, the religious right, the tin foil hat wearers, and the angry white men run the party - the same crowd that effectively destroyed the GOP’s 2012 presidential chances - but we’d sure like them black folks, Mexicans and ladies to vote for us!

Those RINOs the tea partiers detest are the same moderate Republicans who used to help conservatives win elections; you know, guys like Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.

But with the far right wingers making noise disproportionate to their actual numbers – only 8 percent of conservatives self-identify as tea party according to Rasmussen – and Republican elected officials terrified of being “primaried” out of a job, the GOP leadership believes, falsely, that their party must accommodate extremism.

Those elusive minority votes won’t come until Republicans purge their ranks of the radical elements that are costing them elections.

Republicans demand the president plug leaks that jeopardize national security.

When he does, Republicans condemn Obama’s “attack” on the First Amendment.

Just last year, Sen. John McCain was outraged over series of news stories that divulged classified information.

“A really disturbing aspect of this is that one could draw the conclusion from reading these articles that it is an attempt to further the president’s political ambitions for the sake of his re-election at the expense of our national security,” an indignant McCain declared.

An equally incensed Obama denied the senator’s politically-motivated charges when he said the leaks didn’t come from the White House. He then ordered the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor.

Fast forward to May, 2013. The Justice Department seized telephone records from the Associated Press with the goal of plugging the leaks McCain and other Republicans want plugged.

But what about the First Amendment?

We’re at war, remember? There are terrorists who want to kill Americans. The Homeland is threatened. Classified information that appears in the media aids terrorists. At least that’s what Republicans wanted us to believe in 2012.

“We’ve seen more leaks, absolutely,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers told Fox News last year. “This is an opportunity for the president to be bold, to take a stand...It is very clear that somebody who had access to...very senior covert action classified material was responsible for some of these leaks.”

So the administration took bold action. Whether it has the chilling effect many fear remains to be seen. But if it plugs leaks that protect even one American life, then the First Amendment must take a back seat to America’s wartime security as it did in World War II when government censorship of the media was common.

Evidently McCain and other GOP senators agree.

“I want to see the details -- what was their rationale, why did they do it -- before offering an opinion," said McCain of the seizure. "For me, to rush to a judgment without knowing all the facts is just not appropriate."

Interesting to note, George, that your questions have not been answered days later.

Biden and Obama did out SEAL six and the families of some members of that team did hold a news conference at the National Press Club that was heartbreaking. President Obama is hated by the teams. Right,, they must be racist....no, they just know that he's more sympathetic towards our enemies than to them. And the multiple scandals have teeth. Who will Obama throw under the bus next?

Can you imagine the right wing’s reaction to President Barrack Obama donning a flight suit and then landing in a Navy jet on the deck of an aircraft carrier for the purposes of political theater?

That’s what George W. Bush did ten years ago this month, just weeks after he ordered the invasion of Iraq.

These are the kind of teachable moments we, as informed citizens, need to pay attention to. We should not forget or excuse them, but study and learn from them.

Beneath a White House-produced sign declaring “Mission Accomplished,” with the 2004 re-election campaign cameras rolling, Bush announced an “end of major combat operations,” telling Americans ,"In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

“…I just died, and I said my God, it's too conclusive,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would later tell Bob Woodward.

In 2009, Bush admitted, "… putting 'Mission Accomplished' on an aircraft carrier was a mistake.”

Major combat operations weren’t over. In fact, things in Iraq were just heating up as Bush was prancing around in his flight suit on the deck of the U.S.S. Lincoln. They would culminate in a decade-long war of choice, a misadventure of historic proportions that cost the lives of 4,500 Americans and more than $1 trillion.

Worse, the Muslim world saw the slaughter of their co-religionists, more than 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, and reacted with outrage and contempt for America.

Bush’s Iraq debacle didn’t keep America safe; it further endangered America, radicalizing even more Muslims like the Boston bombers.

We also know from confirmed extemporaneous accounts that Bush was looking for any excuse to invade Iraq and overthrow its brutal tyrant, Saddam Hussein, perhaps because Saddam plotted to assassinate Bush’s father.

"After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad at one time," Bush smirked in 2007.

Other than Bush’s personal vendetta, there was no reason to invade Iraq, yet the administration worked feverishly in the run up to the war to sell Congress and Americans on the supposed threat Saddam posed; WMD “mushroom clouds” and all that B.S.

Anybody looking closely and paying attention at the time – people like Sen. Barrack Obama - knew Saddam was a danger only to the unfortunate people of Iraq, a garden variety dictator, just one of many blood-soaked tyrants around the world.

Question: If America was going to take Saddam out, why not all the others?

Answer: Saddam was the one sitting on one of the largest oil reserves in the world.

Now, the same conservatives who cheered for the Iraq invasion, who promised speedy victory, who said we’d be greeted as liberators, that Iraqi oil would pay for the war are demanding another war of choice, this time in Syria.

Ten years after “Mission Accomplished,” we have another teachable moment for America.

George: Speaking of hypocrites, you don't question the identity of people who agree with you, such as "Marie in Marietta" or "Cobb County Guy". Would you be less hypocritical if I changed my screen name to "Bob in Cobb"? I will suggest that you don't mention hypocrisy again.

When I saw 13-year-old Jonathan Krohn’s 2009 CPAC speech shortly after Barrack Obama was sworn in, like everyone else, I was struck by the lad’s eloquence.

Most 13-year-old boys would stand up before a crowd of adults, hands in pockets, and self consciously shuffle and mumble. This home schooled Christian kid from Duluth, Georgia was confident and forceful.

I disagreed with everything he said, of course. It sounded a lot like a mindless Limbaugh-Hannity-O’Reilly-Coulter mash-up - which he now admits it was - but Krohn’s performance was nonetheless impressive.

For awhile, Jonathan was the toast of the far right airwaves, cheered as the future of the conservative movement in America. His book, “Define Conservatism,” was a right wing must read.

Then the boy grew up.

“One of the first things that changed was that I stopped being a social conservative,” Krohn said in a recent interview. “It just didn’t seem right to me anymore. From there, it branched into other issues, everything from health care to economic issues...it’s just that I thought about it more. The issues are so complex, you can’t just go with some ideological mantra for each substantive issue.”

Well done young man. You began thinking for yourself. That’s the second step one must take if one hopes to kick conservative addiction. The first step is accepting you have a problem.

“An open mind and critical thought are like a metaphorical AA after a long bender on ideological wine,” Krohn acknowledges. “I’m proud to say that this program has gotten me three years sober.

Addicts often have enablers somewhere behind the scenes.

“I felt justified in my beliefs if for no other reason than no one actually told me I was wrong,” Krohn explained. “Instead, men like Bill Bennett and Newt Gingrich hailed me as the voice for my generation and a hope for America. “

Ah, Bill and Newt, the gambling addict and the serial philanderer; not exactly the best role models there, Jonathan.

As the recovering conservative dirty trickster David Brock says, you were blinded by the right. You were seduced into believing the world is simple; black or white, good or evil, with nothing in between, except that craps table or the comely blonde on your staff.

“The never-ending war between the left and the right seems to me like a couple of drunken college boys fighting over which one of their fraternities is cooler,” Krohn wrote.

As Jonathan now knows, our progressive fraternity is most definitely a lot cooler. George Clooney and Stevie Wonder are members. Over at the conservative frat house you’ll find Jon Voight and Lee Greenwood.

“I was tired of the right using me as an example of how young people ‘get’ what they’re talking about when it’s obvious that I didn’t get what I talking about at all. I mean, come on, I was between 13 and 14 when I was regurgitating these talking points!”

Meantime, Krohn’s recovery has not been welcomed by his old fraternity brothers. They take a very dim view of someone who kicks the habit.

“I have been treated by the political right with all the maturity of schoolyard bullies. The Daily Caller...wrote three articles about my shift, topping it off with an opinion piece in which they stated that I ... wear “thick-rimmed glasses” ... Why don’t they just call me ‘four-eyes’? These are not adults leveling serious criticism; these are scorned right-wingers showing all the maturity of a little boy. No wonder I fit in so well when I was 13.”

The Boston Marathon bombing revealed two things. The first was the fundamental goodness of every day American people.

The second was the depths to which far right media charlatans will sink to politicize a national tragedy.

As MSNBC's Martin Bashir says in one of the network's Lean Forward ads, when we have something like a bombing happen, we always see Americans running toward the scene to help the victims.

Such was the case in Boston. People tore off their clothes to make tourniquets and bandages. Others carried the wounded to ambulances and hospitals. Many more opened their homes to the tens of thousands of dazed visitors. With nobody directing them to do so, average American people came together in the face of catastrophe. Bostonians did themselves and our country proud.

Then there was Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, and others who disgraced themselves by trying to exploit the bombing, their goal to grab viewers or readers while blaming President Obama for the tragedy.

These blood-suckers weren't interested in informing their viewers and readers. They wanted to cash in, nothing else. If you consume the crap they churn out, you should be embarrassed. If you defend or apologize for them, you should be ashamed and just shut up.

In the wake of 9-11, America unified. We didn't see any media types politicizing or exploiting the worst terrorist attack in American history. We were all Americans and we all behaved that way. I never supported President Bush but, by God, after those planes killed 3,000 of our fellow citizens, Bush was my president and I backed him four-square.

Not Glen Beck. He's calling for President Obama's impeachment. Why? Because recovering drug addict and alcoholic Beck concocted a ludicrous conspiracy theory in which he claims an innocent Saudi student who was injured in the blasts was the "ringleader" of the bombing and being spirited out of the country by the Obama administration.

The only problem with Beck's allegation is that police had already said the Saudi student had no connection to the bombings.

No worries. Sean Hannity will get the story straight....LMAO.

After police cleared the Saudi, the discredited Fox News "security expert" Steve Emerson told Hannity the student was a "suspect" and about to be deported "on national security grounds." Except Emerson had the student confused with a case involving another Saudi. That didn't matter to Hannity or his producers as long as Emerson's lie supported their phony narrative that Obama is in bed with terrorists.

But nobody could beat the New York Post, Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch's "flagship" American fish-wrap, for shoddy, sensational, and incompetent misinformation. First it ran a picture of two men on it's front page under the headline, "Bag Men: Feds seek this duo pictured at Boston Marathon."

But the police weren't looking for the two men in the photo.

Then the Post violated a basic journalism rule. It reported that 12 not three people had died in the bombing. "...(G)ive your crystal ball a good hard polish and drop it over sometime," an editor told Post critics in defending something that would get a reporter fired if it happened at the MDJ or any other reputable newspaper.

Finally, like Beck and Hannity, the Post latched onto the Saudi student story without doing any fact checking to ascertain if, indeed, the student was a suspect; again, basic journalism practice.

Instead, the Post simply reported the student had been "taken into custody" and was considered a "suspect."

See, most right wing media have no respect for the intelligence of their audiences. Their attitude is, facts? We don' need no stinkin' facts! We have a bunch of ignorant viewers and readers who only want their deepest, darkest prejudices and fears affirmed.

Kevin: Of course our president is in bed with the terrorists. Proof of that is the significant percentage of registered Republicans in Alabama who believe President Obama is a Muslim terrorist, born in Kenya. Cobb county Republicans are only a few steps behind those in Alabama.

Progressives are afraid of black conservatives? No, we just feel sorry for them.

You see, conservatism has never been very kind to African-Americans, or pretty much anyone else who isn't wealthy, white and privileged.

Folks like Dr. Ben Carson, Allen West, and Clarence Thomas seem either oblivious or indifferent to the long, sad history of how conservatism has sought to keep African-Americans, along the Hispanics and Latinos, women, gays and pretty much anyone who isn't wealthy, white and privileged at the back of the metaphorical bus.

And, if they had their way, some conservatives would return America to the bad old days of segregation, "colored" water fountains, and Jim Crow. Why, no less than the wealthy, white and privileged Sen. Rand Paul, the tea party darling, says the 1964 Civil Right Act was a bad idea.

"I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant—but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership," said Paul last year. In other words, business owners should be free to discriminate against black people.

This sort of twisted conservative "logic" that explains why more than 90 percent of African-Americans rejected wealthy, white and privileged Mitt Romney when they flocked to Barack Obama in 2012.

Romney, of course, expressed his real views about anyone who isn't wealthy, white and privileged when he made his now-infamous "47 percent" comments at a fund raising dinner attended by his wealthy, white and privileged backers.

After his crushing loss, Romney demonstrated he'd learned nothing, blaming blacks and other minorities who he claimed voted for Obama because they would get "free stuff," a racist characterization if ever there was one.

Another MDJ blogger pointed out that, "black Americans are, by and large, becoming too intelligent to fall for (the progressive) line..." But progressives believe black people have always been intelligent. That's not a new phenomenon as the writer suggests.

So, black conservatives like Carson, West and Thomas can think as they wish. That's what America is all about. It's just that, well, black conservatives are in the minority when it comes to how most African-Americans regard conservatism.

Foley whatever you are--to yourself, you are not to me. You are a progressive who does not begin to understand the positions you espouse.

However , to the question-"where you been?" I usually do not read your column anymore. I find it hard to understand why a person of letters and education can get so confused about the purpose of a republic.

Shame on me for responding to the likes of you. That's it, until another racist, class agitating articel by you makes me feel the need to address the raw hatred of another of your articles.

Dr. Ben Carson became an instant conservative star after he insulted the president of the United States at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Carson’s speech there was otherwise un-noteworthy except to the likes of Sean Hannity, who christened the African-American neurosurgeon a presidential contender on the strength of his churlish performance.

“Marriage is between a man and a woman,” replied the doctor. Fair enough; that’s an opinion held by many. But Carson continued.

Gays and lesbians, he said, along with criminal pedophiles and degenerates who practice bestiality, cannot be permitted to change the “definition of marriage.”

Same-sex adult couples who love one another and wish to wed so they can enjoy the legal rights of marriage are the same sort as those who molest children or have sex with sheep, in Carson’s view.

Coming from someone with his intellect and academic credentials, Carson’s words were not only shocking, they revealed his abject bigotry.

The comments set off a fire storm at Johns Hopkins University, where Carson teaches at the institution’s prestigious medical school. In response, he appeared on MSNBC to offer an apology - sort of.

“…as a Christian…I have a duty to love all people and that includes people who have other sexual orientations…if anybody was offended, I apologize…My point was that once we start changing definitions, where do we stop?”

Well, Dr. Carson should have stopped right there, but on a radio show just a few days later, he tore into his critics.

“(They) take my words…and try to make it seem that I’m a bigot,” Carson declared. “They're the most racist people there are…‘you have to think this way, how could you dare come off the plantation?’"

If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, then the last refuge for a bigot like Dr. Carson is the metaphorical “plantation,” in which he casts himself as a slave, whipped by the awful lash of progressivism.

And, you know what they grow on that progressive plantation, Dr. Carson? The kind of freedom that got you through the front door of Johns Hopkins, that’s what.

Late last week, Carson had another change of heart. In an e-mail to "the Hopkins Community" he said, “I am sorry for any embarrassment this has caused. But what really saddens me is that my poorly chosen words caused pain for some members of our community and for that I offer a most sincere and heartfelt apology…”

Dr. Carson’s mea culpa appears to be motivated less by genuine remorse and more by the e-mail that preceded his own, one sent to faculty and students by Dr. Paul B. Rothman, CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, Carson’s boss:

“…we recognize that tension now exists in our community because hurtful, offensive language was used by (Dr. Carson)...

“Johns Hopkins Medicine embraces diversity and believes that the same civil rights should be available to all regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

“…It is clear that the fundamental principle of freedom of expression has been placed in conflict with our core values of diversity, inclusion and respect.”

Dr. Carson is free to speak his mind. He’s not muzzled by political correctness, as he alleged at the prayer breakfast, no matter how offensive or intolerant his words. But when such words revile many listeners the way his did, there are consequences.

In Carson’s case, it appears he has been uninvited to speak at the Johns Hopkins commencement ceremony as he was scheduled to do in honor of his retirement from the university.

It’s a sad coda to a stellar medical career. And his political future, if he ever actually had one, is D.O.A.

Rep. Michelle Bachmann, a short-lived Republican presidential candidate last year, barely survived re-election in November. She won by just 4,000 votes in a heavily Republican Minnesota district and her Democratic opponent is thinking of running against her again in 2014.

With her stock dropping, Bachmann is desperate.

First, she offered legislation to repeal Obamacare, "the law of the land," according to House Speaker John Boehner. That fizzled, so at CPAC she charged the president with living a lavish life style on the taxpayer dime.

He has Air Force One chefs, a dog walker, and all the other presidential perks, she huffed.

That won her a few minutes of TV news time but it's not the first such attack on Obama. The far right has characterized Obama as lazy and inclined to party with black celebrities and hip hop artists before, so livin' large on the public buck fits the stereotype Bachmann is pushing.

It's more jive from a conservative politician with little to show for her years in congress and nothing much to offer today. When confronted by a CNN reporter about her dog walker remarks, Bachmann ran like the wind from the microphone.

By the way, I'm fine with Bachmann blowing the racial dog whistle.

Let Michelle run her silly mouth. Let her chase away more minorities from the GOP. Let Bachmann continue to damage the conservative brand even more than she has, and more power to her.

But even Fox News is getting fed up with her. Primetime blowhard Bill O'Reilly took Bachmann to task last week.

“Every other president in history has lived in comfort," Billo opined, "and it looks like President Bush the younger had a bigger White House budget than Barack Obama does. This is a trivial pursuit and Michele Bachmann made a mistake pursuing it.”

Instead of a Gubmint bureaucrat determining, based on sketchy Gubmint statistics, what constitutes a "small" risk, the insured decides for himself and buys the policy with the deductibles best suited for his situation.

For those who are truly destitute and/or have very high risk health issues, states could create a high-risk (or assigned risk) pool, not unlike what's available in the auto insurance market.

Of course, careful thought would be required to come up with good workable definitions of "destitute" and/or "high risk."

See, conservatives do belive in safety nets. It's just that we don't want the safety net to become a backyard "hammock." Know what I mean?

While I admire Oleg Ivutin's entreneurship, he has a lot to learn about America as evidenced by his recent interview with Jon Gillooly of the MDJ.

The Russian-American has, without a doubt, demonstrated he's made of the strong stuff immigrants bring to the country. He's worked hard, built businesses and showed that the American dream is alive and well.

What Mr. Ivutin doesn't understand is that America is unique in the world, that we afford the blessings of success on those who earn them, but as part of the social contract, we help those who need it.

"Many Americans have a skewed understanding of what capitalism and communism are, Ivutin believes," according to Gillooley's article. “A lot of Americans think China is communist and America is capitalist. But when you go to China, you realize that it’s vice versa. In China, if you don’t work, you don’t eat...There is so much more socialism here than I’ve seen in the Soviet Union.”

I've been to China. It's an abysmal place where I saw a tiny number of connected people doing extraordinarily well because they play pussyfoot with the anti-democratic military thugs that run the country. There is a small number of what we would call middle class. Then there are hundreds of millions of people living hand to mouth. The poor are everywhere you look and, Ivutin is right, if you can't work, you starve. I saw starving people in the streets of Beijing.

The Chinese government doesn't care about worker's rights or safety, the environment, human rights, or basic economic fairness. It only cares that its leaders are enriched and that everyone else stays in their place. When they don't, you get atrocities like

Tiananmen Square or "re-education camps."

Is this the tea party vision for America? They want a country that looks like China?

I don't doubt Ivutin's sincerity, born of a tough life in a regime that had no regard for the individual. But that's not to say we should forget the individual. People matter in America. We give them a hand up here, we don't leave them behind. That's why we have wildly popular "socialist" programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

It's offensive for Mr. Ivutin to make cracks about "400 pound" people who don't work, playing into a cheap stereotype of unemployed Americans - and I'm pretty sure we all know who he's alluding to. His party wrecked the economy and put a lot of those people on the street.

Mr. Ivutin's poor understanding of politics in America is reflected by this comment:

“I didn’t trust the guy (Mitt Romney), and I wanted us to win the election,” he said. “Romney was the weakest candidate we could produce. Whether it was Herman Cain, whether it was Ron Paul, we would have won the election with this economy.”

No, sorry. It wasn't the package. It was the product. Americans emphatically rejected the stuff Republicans were pushing.

"I believe that the more laws we pass, the less freedoms we have, because every single law that they pass, they take away more freedom," says Ivutin "If they would concentrate on getting rid of a lot of laws, they would do a lot more good for us.”

So we shouldn't have speed limits? We should just led corporations pollute the sky and water? We don't need to have our food and medicines inspected?

Eddie Munster seems to believe the 2012 election, in which he and his running mate were decisively trounced, never happened.

In an Electoral College landslide, Americans rejected Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and all their little ideas. A big part of what they said no to was the celebrated Ryan budget, which Mitt characterized as "marvelous" when he brought the young congressman onto his ticket.

Upon further review, however, the public came to understand Ryan's budget would eviscerate the social safety net while sparing the wealthiest Americans any sacrifices at all.

But that was four months ago. We're moving on, right? Wrong.

Ryan unveiled his so-called "Pathway to Prosperity" budget today and it's nearly identical to the one voters nixed. It will cut spending by $4.6 trillion through 2023 by killing or maiming most everything Obama has been able to do since taking office in 2009.

You have to admire Ryan's arrogance. He represents Wisconsin's 1st District, a blighted Rust Belt backwater, but thinks he's Master of the Universe.

Ryan lunched with the president last week as part of Obama's charm offensive with select members of congress and reportedly the two had a productive meeting.

But now Ryan is behaving like he's the one in the White House and it's Obama with his cap in hand. Ryan says it's about time for Obama to stop "campaigning" and come over to his way of thinking.

Then Ryan, who fancies himself presidential material in 2016, started campaigning. "People do not find happiness in grim isolation or by government fiat," he opined. "They find it through friendship — through free, vibrant exchange with the people around them. They find it through achievement. They find it in their families and neighborhoods, their places of worship and youth groups. They find it in a healthy mix of self-fulfillment and belonging.”

How would Ryan know any of this? He's been inside the Beltway since before he graduated college 20 years ago, feeding at the public trough and producing budgets his fat cat benefactors call marvelous.

What Ryan's budget does do is eliminate Obamacare, which even House Speaker John Boehner calls the law of the land. So that's D.O.A.

Medicaid would lose almost a trillion dollars. Food stamps and agricultural subsidies would be cut by $31 billion. Pell grants would be chopped. Ryan was forced to back off his threats to voucherize Medicare. He'd prefer you shop for health insurance with your $6,000 government voucher when you're 88 years old, but that'll have to wait.

No mention anywhere of closing tax loopholes for wealthy Americans or big corporations, so those deductions for private jets are safe if Ryan gets his way.

Fortunately, his budget proposal is as meaningless as Ryan's presidential ambitions.

The tax increases Obama wrested from Republicans in January along with sequestration cuts are already putting a dent in the deficit. The Senate will present its budget next week, one that's sure to be in line with what the majority of Americans think is reasonable.

There are even signs that some Republicans in the House have begun growing backbones, sick of the self-serving games guys like Ryan are playing. Chances are good a true bipartisan budget could be forged, one that continues to reduce the deficit without putting the entire burden on the poor, elderly and middle class.

@Marie: Being prepared for any debate is always a good idea. Reading from what is written is not out of the ordinary to emphasize any point, it is permitted in every debate I have witnessed. Reading the text of let's say a newly minted law, ensures accuracy.

Kevin Foley is a 1979 graduate of the University of Connecticut and a former newspaper reporter. In 1981, he began his 30-year career in public relations, working in account management for Burson-Marsteller and Ketchum, two international PR firms. In 1986, he launched KEF Media in Chicago, a firm specializing in broadcast and Internet public relations. He moved the company to Atlanta in 1993. His career has taken him around the world and to every major city in America. Along the way he has worked with celebrities and public figures like Hank Aaron, Jane Seymour, Bob Dole, Nolan Ryan and Ryan Seacrest. Kevin went into semi-retirement in 2009 to pursue his long delayed writing career. In 2008 he published his first novel, "Where Law Ends," and has three other novels in various stages of completion. Kevin serves on the board of directors at Pinetree Country Club where enjoys golf and tennis. He and his wife Susie live in Kennesaw. The couple has two grown children.